


A Totally Normal Dad

by betheflame



Series: STB Bingo Round One [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Christmas, Identity Porn, Kid Fic, Kid Peter Parker, M/M, Parent Steve Rogers, Parent Tony Stark, Protective Steve Rogers, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27861029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betheflame/pseuds/betheflame
Summary: Steve is a totally normal, boring, suburban, stay-at-home-dad.He's also a superhero.His husband only knows the first sentence.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Steve Rogers & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: STB Bingo Round One [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2039694
Comments: 53
Kudos: 431
Collections: STB Bingo: Round One





	A Totally Normal Dad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BladeoftheNebula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BladeoftheNebula/gifts).



> Blade prompted this over at POTS - and I had to chase it. Then [superdecibles](https://superdecibels.tumblr.com/) started posting doodles in the server and I had to write faster and THEN drew gorgeous art FOR THE FIC and I'm ded.
> 
> A Fill for STB Bingo: I4 "Distress Call"

It was a joke between them, that no one in the neighborhood thought Steve was good at anything. Honestly, it didn’t bother Steve at all.

Mostly because if Tony knew how much it was a joke, the whole ruse would be up.

“Honey,” Tony called and Steve slammed his knee on the table getting up. After all these years, he still wasn’t used to his body sometimes.

“Yeah, babe?”

“Can you do the carpool run? I’m covered in grease,” Tony yelled from the basement.

Steve smiled. His husband was always covered in grease, or flour, or glue, or some other substance related to an experiment of some kind. Glitter had entered the repertoire earlier in the year when Craft Time With Daddy had become part of Peter’s weekends.

Steve was convinced Tony just wanted an excuse to make homemade Play-Doh.

“Yeah, no problem,” Steve called back.

“Don’t get lost,” Tony said with a laugh.

“Har har,” Steve said, deadpan, and was gratified to hear Tony’s laugh float up the stairs. He grabbed the keys to their exceptionally suburban SUV, left their exceptionally suburban house, to drive through their exceptionally suburban neighborhood, to pick up his son and his son’s friends from the exceptionally suburban activity that was soccer practice.

It was boring.

Predictable.

Calm.

Steady.

And blissful beyond Steve’s wildest imagination.

He just needed Fury to stop calling the coded phone, so he could keep it that way.

* * *

* * *

If you asked Peter Stark, aged five and three quarters, what his favorite thing about his Pops was, he would tell you his hugs.

His daddy was super fun, but a little grumpy when he hadn’t slept. Which was a lot. But he had a hard job and Peter missed him when he was doing other things. He was happy that they’d started building things together, even if Pops did his frowny face whenever they used the sparkles.

Pops, though, was around all the time and he gave the best hugs. He did a lot of other things Peter loved - making cookies, sewing Peter’s costumes for dance class, watching Paw Patrol. Once, Jeremy Gordon at school said that Pops was like a mom and he said it in this really mean way that made Peter angry. He never knew what to do when he got angry, so thankfully his best friend Shuri told Jeremy that Peter had two dads and that his dads did dad and mom things together because moms did dad things and dads did mom things and he was a stupidhead for being mean to Peter.

Peter had three best friends in the whole world. Shuri, MJ, and Kamala all had one mom and one dad and he liked going to their houses too, but it was weird. He had Miss Nat and Aunt Pepper and Aunt Sharon and Grandma and Nana, but to have a mom? All the time? Seemed odd. Who in their houses lifted the couch so they could clean under it? Or chopped down the trees when they were too close to the house?

Peter did worry about all the times Pops answered the phone with a funny expression and then left the room. He’d come back and tell Peter not worry, but Peter worried. The phone calls always came on the second phone Pops had and they always made him sad. Peter hated when either of his dads were sad.

Maybe if he answered once he could tell the person to stop making his Pops so sad.

* * *

* * *

“DADDY!” Peter yelled as he cannonballed through the trees. “I THINK I’VE FOUND IT.”

Tony bit back a smile and slipped his hand into Steve’s as they followed their son. “I wonder if this will be like last year where he found nine perfect ones.”

“Oh, I’d imagine,” Steve grinned. “You’re raising a pedant.”

“I’m raising a pedant,” Tony said in mock horror. “Me? I’m the picture of flexibility compared to you.”

“I’m flexible,” Steve protested.

“Yes, because the Grant family motto is ‘When someone stands in front of you and tells you to move, you comply without complaint’. I think I remember that from our vows.”

“To be so tragically misunderstood by my husband is a cross I bear,” Steve said and squeezed Tony’s hand in a rhythm they’d long ago established.

They’d met ten years before and spent the first years of their friendship existing in the most awkward sexual tension known to man, because Steve was technically Tony’s employee. He’d been brought in as a bodyguard after Tony suffered a particularly nasty assassination attempt. Then, about three years into the arrangement, Tony begged his best friend/boss to find him a new bodyguard because if he didn’t start licking Steve immediately he would expire from pain.

Pepper called him a drama queen and hired a scarily competent woman named Natasha and Steve and Tony had gotten married 18 months later.

Adopting Peter had been a no-brainer. A friend of theirs had an unplanned pregnancy and it felt completely right to both of them to offer to adopt him. She was relieved and they all still had a great relationship. Peter knew that Mary was his birth mom, but they all knew he didn’t really know what that meant.

If Tony thought he had loved Steve before, fatherhood brought out an entirely new level of love. Steve had immediately quit his job - he’d been working as a bodyguard for Pepper at the time - and became the world’s most involved stay-at-home dad.

“DADDY. POPS. YOU ARE SLOW.”

The call came from a tree several yards up and Tony and Steve picked up their pace. When they made their way to Peter, Tony’s jaw dropped a little.

“That is the perfect tree,” Tony said and grinned at Peter. “Good job, buddy.”

Peter preened. “I knocked on the trunk like you taught me, Pops, and it sounds right.”

“Well then, let’s get going,” Steve said and handed Peter a pair of work gloves from the backpack he was wearing. “Are you ready to saw a little this year?”

Peter nodded so solemnly that Tony’s heart skipped a beat. It was like getting a preview of the man he’d become some day. He watched Steve guide Peter through sawing the tree and patiently make sure that Peter was both safe and involved.

And then, just like every year they’d been together, he marveled when Steve simply picked up the tree and carried it.

* * *

* * *

_“Today, in Tinnicum Township, a heartwarming tale of a Good Samaritan. Alba Rodriguez says that her car slipped off the road on Sweetwater Avenue and into a ditch. She claims the car flipped onto its side and a stranger stopped and tipped it back flat so that she could exit the car safely. He didn’t leave his name, but Alba wants to thank the blond man, who she is calling ‘her angel’, for his help.”_

Tony’s eyebrow cocked at the idea that someone could simply flip a car back that easily. The woman looked elderly - perhaps her brain was going. He heard the door to his lab open and Steve called down.

“Tones, I’m home! Ran into a little traffic coming back from dropping Peter off at the Kahn’s.”

 _The Kahn’s_. “You had to take Sweetwater, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, why?”

 _Because a blond man flipped a car and I’m going crazy, you’re strong but you can’t do that. I know you can’t._ “Heard there was a minor accident,” Tony said instead.

He heard Steve pause in his pacing above. “I hope everyone’s okay.”

Tony put down his wrench and spoke slowly. “Sounds like a Good Samaritan saved a woman by flipping her car back rightly.”

“Wow,” Steve said and Tony could hear some level of strain in Steve’s voice. There was something Steve wasn’t telling him. “Glad that guy was there.”

 _Never said it was a guy._ “Yeah, sounds like she is, too.”

“Pizza for dinner?”

“Sure.”

* * *

“Daddy,” Peter said solemnly two weeks before Christmas, “why does Pops have two phones?”

“What are you talking about, Petey Pie? Pops only has the one phone.”

“No,” Peter said adamantly as he placed the next Lego in their tower. “He has the one you and I are on and then the one that he keeps in the box by the floor.”

The box by the floor. Tony’s brain slowed - a very rare occurrence. He felt like his whole body was frozen as he croaked out, “Can you show me?”

Peter scampered to the corner cabinet in their family room and dug behind some discarded DVDs. He produced a small plastic box with a government issued phone in it. The screen was lit with messages from someone named Nick and Steve was clearly ignoring him.

“You know, Petey? That’s something that Pops obviously wants to keep private and we should let him. When he’s ready to tell us, I’m sure he will,” Tony said, hoping beyond hope that he sounded both comforting and assured.

“But I wanna know,” Peter said with a slight whine.

“But you don’t get to right now and that’s okay,” Tony replied. A lesson he had to learn the hard way many, many times. “Now, can you go put that back and then come here and talk me through what we’re building.”

Peter complied and Tony lost himself in thought.

_Who the living fuck is Nick? Why does Steve have the same phone the FBI guys at SI have? Is Steve in the CIA? How? He’s never not home! What is going on?_

* * *

Steve fucking _hated_ Elf on a Shelf.

They weren’t going to do it - he felt it was significantly too 1984 to subject children to - but all of Peter’s friends had one or a version - even Kamala - and so he and Tony had caved. Trying to remember where Archibald had been already was a nightmare, much less coming up with new and exciting messages for him to leave for Peter.

That night, Steve was outsourcing. Their neighbor Abi was an amazing artist and she and Steve collaborated a few times on larger projects she’d taken on. She had a whole Instagram where she featured daily doodles and he loved them, so he asked for a few “from Archibald” and she was all too happy to comply.

He twisted the Elf around the ceiling fan and then placed the doodle on the kitchen table in Peter’s spot. Tony was down in his workshop, trying to get some new something on a motherboard working, so he did his daily check of the SHIELD phone.

Texts from Nick, a video message from Sam, two voicemails from Maria, and a few updates from Natasha. As Tony traveled less for SI and Pepper traveled more, Steve was so grateful he’d been able to secure that job for her. He felt better with Pepper protected by one of the absolute best. He could cover Tony, but if something happened to Pepper…

He responded to all the messages that deserved responses - which did not include Nick’s pleas for him to join them for a mission in Bratislava the next day - and stored the phone back in its place.

He knew it was time to tell Tony the truth, especially because he’d promised Nick he’d come back as a consultant when Peter was full-time in school and that had happened in September. The problem was… he loved being Steven Grant, ordinary citizen, rather than Steve Rogers, Captain America. It was a gift he wasn’t ready to let go of.

He’d been given this body to harm people with it, and instead, he got to use it to take care of his family. He knew SHIELD would say the body was also to keep people safe, but truly? The blood on his hands never washed off and he knew other people felt the same. The U.S. Government had officially retired Captain America in the 1960s and Steve had gone through a dozen or so identities as he continued to not age as part of the serum.

But Nick had watched Princess Bride the previous summer and had decided Cap could be like Dread Pirate Roberts and so they could re-introduce Captain America to the American public. All Steve wanted from SHIELD was technology to help him start aging so he could grow old with Tony.

Steve made his way down to Tony’s workshop and plopped on the couch while Tony talked to JARVIS. It took a few minutes for Tony to notice him - it usually did - but then his smile was big and he came over and collapsed next to Steve.

“He's going to eat the freezer tonight, that’s the plan?” Tony asked as he lazily ran his hand up and down Steve’s forearm, sending shivers down Steve’s spine.

“Yeah,” Steve replied. “I put all the stuff in the basement freezer. I think Petey’ll get a kick out of it.”

“Good,” Tony affirmed. “I have some more ideas -”

“Tony,” Steve interrupted.

“Yes?”

At the last second, Steve couldn’t make the words come out of his mouth. Instead, he said, “I don’t want to talk about an elf for one more second tonight.”

“What do you want to talk about?” Tony asked.

Steve shifted Tony onto his lap. “I’d prefer to stop talking all together.”

* * *

“All right,” Tony said, smiling at Peter. “One present tonight.”

Peter nearly tripped over his feet to get to the pile already under the tree. He took out a medium-sized box and read the tag. “Aunt Pepper and Uncle Rhodey!” Peter plopped down and began tearing at the paper when there was a knock on the door.

“What the -” Tony started and Steve got up to answer. Tony followed and saw a large man standing in the doorway and could tell from the way Steve was holding his body that Steve both knew this man and was not happy to see him.

“Cap, they’ve got the President. You aren’t answering your phone -”

“It hasn’t rung!”

“I’ve called it nine times in the last two hours,” the man said.

“What is happening?” Tony asked.

Steve turned and opened his mouth to talk, but the other man beat him to it. “Mr. Stark, I’m sorry to interrupt your festivities, but I need your husband for a few days. I’ll have him back to you by New Year’s.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Tony’s mouth fell open in shock and confusion.

“Is this about Pop’s secret phone?” Peter asked from behind Tony and Tony whipped around to see Peter holding the plastic box. “It wouldn’t stop ringing and I wanted Christmas, so I hid it in the secret dog house in the garage. But here, you can have it back, Pops.”

Steve wordlessly accepted the phone and turned back to the man in the entrance way. “Nick, I’m so sorry, but you have other people, and I’m with my family.”

“This is an order from your commander,” Nick growled.

“My commanding officer was Margaret Carter and I am retired,” Steve snapped back.

Tony’s brain whirred and sputtered. _Margaret Carter, like Peggy? Like Aunt Peggy?_ Like… “Holy fuck, that’s why you can lift cars.”

Steve turned around and his face was full of pain. “I didn’t want you to find out like this,” Steve said pleadingly.

“I’m sure it could have come up sometime in the last decade, yes,” Tony admitted.

“Are you mad?”

“I have no idea what I am right now,” Tony admitted, “but it sounds like you need to go with Eyepatch and save the President, which is not a phrase I ever thought would come out of my mouth, so we’ll talk later.”

“I -”

Tony stepped closer to Steve. “You can’t die, right? That’s part of this? You’re chemically immortal? I’ve read Dad’s files, I know the serum. So go, save the world, don’t die because you can’t, and then come home and we’ll figure this out.”

“You’re not mad,” Steve repeated, more like an affirmation than a question.

“I have some questions about the true limits of your super-strength and...er… stamina that we can conduct experiments on later, but right now, get your perfect ass out of here. Oh god, that’s America’s Ass isn’t it? I’ve been…. Right. Petey, Pops needs to go be a hero right now, so we’re going to stop Christmas until he comes back.”

“Okay!” Tony was sure Peter would be a bit mopey once the excitement died down, but right now, the kid was rolling with it and Tony was grateful.

“My shield’s in the basement,” Steve said to Fury. “I’ll go get it.” He turned and kissed Tony soundly before pulling Peter into a hug and telling him to mind his daddy.

Tony watched as Steve’s entire body carriage changed. He stood taller as he went to the basement to retrieve his gear and walked with more purpose. His husband transformed from an earnest, affable suburban dad to a literal superhero right before his eyes.

Although, if Tony was pressed, he’d say that what Steve did every day in taking primary responsibility for Peter was pretty fucking heroic.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Steve assured Tony and Tony smiled.

“Dad always said Cap keeps his promises, so I’ll see you soon, baby.”

* * *

_“Breaking news out of Washington. The President has been recovered due to the assistance of Captain America, who has emerged from retirement just in the nick of time. The Secret Service thanked the Captain for his assistance and stated they looked forward to working with him in the future.”_

Steve shut the television off and turned to Tony. He’d suffered four broken ribs, a perforated lung, and a sprained ankle rescuing President Santos from the bunker he’d been thrown into. Everything but the lung was fully healed by the time he made it home.

“You’re seriously okay with this?” Steve said.

“You explained why it was secret, I get it. I’ll have four million freak outs, I’m sure, but mostly now I’m wondering why I didn’t see it. Dad told me that Cap was just in hiding and would come back when we needed him. When you didn’t show back up after 9/11, I assumed -”

“I did,” Steve said. “Just not as Cap. They threw me into Seal Team Six.”

Tony blinked.

“The uniform. Didn’t blend well in the desert.”

“Can’t say it would,” Tony said with a grin.

“POPS. DADDY. I AM TIRED OF THE BATH.”

Steve laughed. “Better go rescue our boy from the jaws of the bathtub.”

“Bit of a step down from two days ago,” Tony remarked.

“Nah,” Steve said, “definitely a step up.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked the story, I'd love to know! Kudos and comments are life giving. If you're not sure what to say in the comment, know that I take keyboard smashes and emojis as full love. So, if you liked it more than just a kudos, dropping a heart emoji is great and I thank you in advance.
> 
> Find me on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/betheflame1) or [Tumblr](http://betheflame.tumblr.com) for more on these yahoos. You can also submit prompts and cajole me into writing faster - it usually works. If you're on Discord, I'm definitely there, too, and probably hanging in the [Put on the Suit Stony Server ](https://discord.gg/z5WSqbS) or the [STB Enthusiasts Stuckony](https://discord.gg/ktXHUb4) one.  
>   
> Oh! And FestiveFerret and I have a [fandom podcast](http://www.podonthesuit.com) if you're so inclined.  
>   
> 


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